As with bands, the best shit is the old shit [read: pre-Hollyweird sun, but don't be a foolish fool and sleep on some late run gemstone fun], and the bestest with the mostest is found primarily among the first three where director of photography John S. Bartley's dank, basement grit beautifully lit the natural brood of cold, damp Vancouver into delicious gloom. Shouldn't every gig be filmed up there?

The Erlenmeyer Flask. Gripping action, Scully-lipped exposition, noir convention, plop plop alien fizz oh WTF they shot him Usenet they fuckin' shot Deep Throat. Convoluted or not later on = opinions = assholes, so just lap up the great unknown 'cause the chase is always better than the catch.

Humbug. "I believe these are your trailers. If they are not, then I am wrong." Jim Rose Circus Sideshow! Scully the bug-eater! I hope bugs, big gaping-maw ones, eat the empty three-pieces that never gave Darin Morgan his own show.

Duane Barry/Ascension/One Breath, or, holy shit, our lead actress's oven's bunned. Best on-the-fly adaptation in the history of Satan's mind control box. The always great Steve Railsback is great as always, and Steven Williams was, funk exchanged for trenchcoat natch, fuckin' Shaft.

Squeeze/Tooms. THE creepy creeping creep, but whether that's Doug Hutchison himself or his liver-eating mutant alter ego is entirely up to way your brain fries.

Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. Life sucks, and then, stupendous yapper, you die. Peter Boyle hits a 600-foot dinger and why didn't Darin Morgan ever get his own show?

"For although we may not be alone in the universe, in our own separate ways, on this planet, we are all alone."

See, the truth is indeed out there.

Bad Blood. He said, she said meets vampires. Much guffawing ensues. Toothless critics, stick to meth. Vince Gilligan's best work was on the X-Files.

The Host. Nuclear waste doesn't have benefits? Ladies and germs, the Flukeman!

Irresistible. Humans are always spookier than mutants or aliens, I mean, according to the literature. Let us celebrate both the birth pangs of the obscenely underrated Millennium and Scully's 100th abduction. And it's only season two!

Memento Mori. Glowing green tanks of clones, drawer after drawer of abductee ova, Mulder and the Lone Gunmen doing some funky poaching whilst dodging bullets, and oh yeah, the Big C. Skinner deals with the devil for Scully's cure. That can't end well.

Anasazi/The Blessing Way/Paper Clip. A master class in how you employ the master race, as alien-human hybrid making tools of their hegemonic inheritors, i.e., us. Though on second thought, I just might prefer the Unit 731 two-parter later on in season three. Oh, beguiling villainy, swoon.

War of the Coprophages. Artificially intelligent, dung-eating, robotic probes from outer space can spice up any Friday night. Written by you-know-who.

Pusher. Most compelling cerulean blue this side of the CSM, en plus detective Frank Burst, whose heart, of course, burst.

Darkness Falls. TREES IST KRIEG. Chris Carter may have weaned his chops on Kolchak, but the greasy ick of those nature's revenge flicks surely seeped in.

The Pine Bluff Variant. A stretched rubber band of a thriller featuring undercover danger, a far right fringe determined to use a lethal toxin on an unsuspecting populace, a toxin manufactured by our own government, the fringe itself the agent of nefarious elements within said government?

Trust you? You're the one who made me start to listen to death metal and got me addicted to William Berger's Castle of Quiet at midnight Thursday morning on WFMU just two years before Station Manager Ken took Berger's show away last month and I'm jonesing, man, and it's all your fault.

A couple of months ago we decided to netflix Twin Peaks which was pretty cool at first (loved Mulder as an FBI agent in drag) until it went horribly wrong. Once we'd done with that show we decided to watch another series we'd never seen before either. Guess which one?

So far my favorite episode was the alien Amish vampire sex addict one. Of course the smoking man carrying alien artifacts into the bowels of the Pentagon filing warehouse (where they keep them in cardboard boxes) is also always good for a laugh. If only it weren't all true.

BB, season three had problems trying to mesh season one's grim and two's WTF (not to mention a poor job writing their way out of the supposed apocalypse), but there are some good episodes in there, and the last two are excellent, especially the scene were Frank nearly pops a cap in Watts' ass.

jim, now there's a way to survive the impending invasion, hide in a fridge.

susan, where do you think it went wrong? I'm one of maybe three people who actually digs the majority of season two, but yeah, solving the murder was definitely a mistake (stupid network), and in the episode right after there's the goofy music and the goofier Dick Tremayne, but I do think they got back on track towards the end with the Black Lodge bit and Cooper's "how's Annie?" gig is lovely.